Reality is veiwed with the lense of perception and everyone perceives the world differently. Combine that with lawyers, accountants, economists and other experts/spin meisters and it seems everybody is entitled to their own facts.

To me, this race boils down to two different plans - one to build the country from the ground up, and another to build the country from the top down. To use an architecture analogy; I favor the plan that strengthens the foundation rather than gilds the spire.

"People get hung up on the true/false thing," said Nyhan, a former fact-checker himself. "It gets away from the core issue, which is whether something is a responsible claim to make in public life or not."

You can't win whack-a-mole against a lie machine.Chasing each lie and each framing of each lie is exactly the wrong way to go about it.But if you provide factual context for an entire issue, future lies on that topic are already taken care of.

If someone says "you cut 700B from Medicare", the right way to 'fact check' that statement is to provide factual context for the issue.Identify what Medicare's situation was, what the proposals were, where savings came from, who's for a given reform and who's against, etc.It would be rather like keeping a running wiki on political issues.

But, of course, that's bad for ratings/clicks."Fact-checking" has taken off exactly *because* the format delivers no definitive information, stirs just as much controversy and enjoys a never-ending supply of source material.

Zeb Hesselgresser:"People get hung up on the true/false thing," said Nyhan, a former fact-checker himself. "It gets away from the core issue, which is whether something is a responsible claim to make in public life or not."

F#ck you, F#ck you, F#ck you. It is a true or false thing.

No, in the strictest sense it is not true or false.Its either factual, or wrong. True or false IS perception. Whether something is real or not is whether its factual or not.You are right though. The dude who said that can screw himself. The core issue is whether or not the words issuing forth from the candidates is something that is real, factual, and correct, or something that is fake, wrong, or a lie.

The highlighted is a terrible statement, unless you define it as: a responsible claim == a fact.fark, at this point I will take mostly even./would never have bet I would long for the days when politicians merely twisted or stretched the truth a bit//This post-factual campaign shiat needs to END

The terminology differs from fact-checker to fact-checker. But the reality is that the vast majority of claims fact-checkers put under scrutiny are deemed to be partly true or partly false but rarely completely one or the other.

The triumph of the neither wholly true nor wholly false partly reflects the complexity of the issues. But credit mostly goes to obfuscation by the campaigns.

It is also because the press doesn't have the guts to call "bullshiat" when something is total bullshiat out of fear of being called "biased". So the press obfuscates the issues themselves as a way to pander but still appear to be doing their job because it is more about ratings than the truth.

ringersol:the right way to 'fact check' that statement is to provide factual context for the issue.Identify what Medicare's situation was, what the proposals were, where savings came from, who's for a given reform and who's against, etc.It would be rather like keeping a running wiki on political issues.

But, of course, that's bad for ratings/clicks."Fact-checking" has taken off exactly *because* the format delivers no definitive information, stirs just as much controversy and enjoys a never-ending supply of source material.

I don't know what fact-checking you're checking, but the fact-checking that I'm checking often describes those "situations, proposals, savings, etc" that you say is missing.

Zeb Hesselgresser:"People get hung up on the true/false thing," said Nyhan, a former fact-checker himself. "It gets away from the core issue, which is whether something is a responsible claim to make in public life or not."

F#ck you, F#ck you, F#ck you. It is a true or false thing.

i didn't read the article, but I doubt it's ever as clear as true or false. say the statement is: you destroyed the automotive industry by bailing out X company.

here are the true/false parts: did you bail out company X?

here are the not quite true or false parts: is the automotive industry destroyed? if so, was the bail out the cause? were there other, intervening causes? etc.

these issues can't be answered by a simple true or false classification. destruction needs to be defined, so that it can be quantified. the other causes need to be addressed so they can be given their quantifiable merit. and then, once you have an answer, you can't really say more than that the original statement has merit and could be true, or the original statement has no merit and is very unlikely to be true.

Zeb Hesselgresser:"People get hung up on the true/false thing," said Nyhan, a former fact-checker himself. "It gets away from the core issue, which is whether something is a responsible claim to make in public life or not."

F#ck you, F#ck you, F#ck you. It is a true or false thing.

Yep. Contrary to what the article would suggest, there's no such thing as "somewhere in between". True or false; honest or a lie. A lengthy statement can have elements which are true and others which are false, but the statement as a whole can only be judged by its lowest common denominator. It's impossible to elect an honest politician in a society which places so little value in honesty. Or one which is quite often hostile toward it.

I don't even read the fact-checkers' opinions. I don't need to. Everyone knows that all politicians stretch the truth to support their positions. If it seems to good to be true, it isn't so good and v/v.

Embden.Meyerhof: " the fact-checking that I'm checking often describes those "situations, proposals, savings, etc" that you say is missing."

They describe that stuff in passing and spend their time quibbling over subjective interpretations of data. e.g. what portion of the federal deficit 'fair' to blame on Obama. what start and stop dates are 'fair' for framing government growth/spending/etc.

What you would want to do is step back and say "they're talking about the deficit? Here's the deficit. Here's where it came from. Here's what Obama did. Here's the deficit with/without what Obama did, Here's what Obama proposed additionally. Here's how that applies to the deficit. etc."

Trying to attribute "pinnochios" based on whether it was 'fair' to start the context of a claim about spending in January vs April is not the same thing.Not even if you give lip service to the source of the deficit for a paragraph or two.

Even if you stipulate that the Planned Parenthood Action Fund claims about Romney's previous positions are true, they don't actually contradict Romney's statement. Reversing Roe v. Wade would be a judicial action, not a legislative one. Neither "birth control" nor "health protections" is the same as abortion (and ObamaCare supporters claim that it does not cover abortion).

Would an end to "federal funding for Planned Parenthood's preventive services" be "legislation with regards to abortion"? Only if, as Planned Parenthood has taken great pains to deny, the organization is in fact an abortion mill.